So I lied. I didn’t take that dating break I mentioned last week. I couldn’t help it! I met someone a few days afterwards while I was out for my friend’s bachelorette party.
I stepped on his foot at least twice and also said that it was too hot for him to be wearing a sweater and he took it all in stride, so I figured it was worth a shot.
There was just one problem: I couldn’t remember his name. I hadn’t saved it in my phone when we met and his text to me the next day was just, “How are you? I feel like I got run over by a truck,” – which in case you didn’t know is how all modern love stories start.
“I have no idea what his name is,” I said to my friend the day before our date. “I think it was Wayne but it also could have been anything with a W. But he doesn’t look like a Wayne, so I don’t think that’s it.”
“Can’t argue with that,” she shrugged. “Doesn’t look like a W.”
I decided the only logical thing to do would be to show up to brunch late and wait for the hostess to call his name once our table was ready.
“Or you could just ask him what it is,” she suggested.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “This is way better.”
But as luck would have it, I didn’t even need that plan because shortly before we were to meet, he sent me a text message from his work account that included his full name and email address. For anyone interested, he was a Wayne and he works at a bank. I’m only surprised by only one of those things.
So with that crisis averted, I met him at the restaurant just as he was getting out of a cab. After a few minutes of chatting on the sidewalk, he got a bit tongue-tied.
“I have to tell you something terrible,” he said. “I don’t remember your name.”
“What?!” I said. “I saw you put it in your phone on Saturday!”
“Yeah,” he said. “But for whatever reason, I saved it as Irish Bird.”
That’s interesting in its own right, but especially because I resemble an Irish Bird about as much as he does a Wayne.
We’ll never solve that mystery. Like so many things, the story was washed away with my third cocktail. But I find it oddly endearing that we’re both guilty of the same a spotty memory. And you know what they say. Birds of a feather…